There are some ideas that linger on our editorial calendar, never finding a permanent slot and never actually getting done but also never going away. For whatever reason, we can’t just pull the ripcord on them. A good example is our January 2014 cover package about Dallas radio, headlined by Jamie Thompson’s story about the late Kidd Kraddick. I remember meeting Tim and some of the other editors from D at The Old Monk to discuss a Dallas radio package before I even worked here, sometime in 2005 or 2006. It might have even been on the schedule before that.
The microfiction package I put together and edited in our July issue is another one. I don’t remember exactly when I first pitched it. My best guess is probably five years ago. Since we wanted it to run in the summer, it required some advance preparation, and we kept missing our window. But this time, thanks to some gentle prodding from Tim, I was able to get eight talented writers — Brooks Egerton, Sanderia Faye, Julia Heaberlin, Harry Hunsicker, Kathleen Kent, Ken Lowery, David Searcy, and Merritt Tierce — to deliver stories between 200 and 1,000 words long, tiny little slivers of Dallas.
I hope you enjoy it. And now that we’ve done it once, expect it to happen again. You won’t have to wait another five years.
